Fake News: Navy Destroyer Did NOT Collide With Building In Downtown Houston

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk

Military satire website Duffel Blog posted an article titled "Navy destroyer collides with building in downtown Houston" which opened:

HOUSTON -- As if the city of Houston hasn't seen enough tragedy due to catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Harvey, things took a turn for the worse today after a U.S. Navy ship collided with a building in the downtown area.

The ship was identified as an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer belonging to the Navy's 7th Fleet.

It was unclear why the destroyer was not able to see the building and take evasive action, or why it was over 20 miles inland and trying to navigate through a major metropolitan area.

The story is clearly not true since the photo that went with the story is obviously photoshopped:

mustin.jpg

  • The name of the ship is mirrored. It reads "Mustin" if you hold a mirror next to it. The USS Mustin is an actual Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.
  • It looks like the ship was cropped out of this photo on Wikipedia, including the bird.
  • The "reflection" of the ship in the water covers part of the trees.
  • The skies are clear and it is not raining, so the cityscape was obviously not photographed today.

That, and the disclaimer of Duffel Blog reads:

We are in no way, shape, or form, a real news outlet. Everything on this website is satirical and the content of this site is a parody of a news organization. No composition should be regarded as truthful, and no reference of an individual, company, or military unit seeks to inflict malice or emotional harm.

All characters, groups, and military units appearing in these works are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual military units and companies is purely coincidental.

So if you see anyone spreading this photo as real don't hesitate to steer them over here so they can collide with the truth for a change...

Want to inform others about the accuracy of this story?

See who is sharing it (it might even be your friends...) and leave the link in the comments.:


  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

About Us

International Fact-Checking Organization Meta Third-Party Fact Checker

Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
Spotted something? Let us know!.

Lead Stories is a:


@leadstories

Subscribe to our newsletter

* indicates required

Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Lead Stories LLC:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.

Most Read

Most Recent

Share your opinion